


feel me in the saturation when the sun burns out

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: an unquiet mind [4]
Category: From Paris with Love (2010)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Angst, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Car Accidents, Hallucinations, Horror, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt Reece, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Prophetic Visions, Reece is having a bad day, Trope Bingo Round 12, Wax to the Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 08:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18752299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: A melody haunting and eternal, unruptured beauty and simultaneous encompassing peace to Reece’s ears. It wasn’t floating from the radio but crowded into Reece’s veins, stirring up his blood, leaking into his head until all of his consciousness and all of his very existence were caught up in this one ethereal voice, this soothing lullaby draining him of all fragility and self-doubt, this voice that sang only for him, boundlessly heartbroken and stunningly joyful and playfully teasing all at once.And then the impact, disjointing his crippling desperation, tearing him asunder, ripping him away from her.Essentially, what happens when Wax sends Reece on a coffee run.





	feel me in the saturation when the sun burns out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill on my Trope Bingo [card](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/30129.html) for Altered States (of the mind). 
> 
> Title and lyrics are from Blue Stahli’s ‘Corner.’ 
> 
> This is set in the same Monsters/Hunters world that my other fics ‘The Skin Job’, ‘Hang Tight’, ‘murky like my heart’ and the Supernatural crossover ‘we’re higher than our silence and deeper than our violence’ are set in. Wow, I definitely need to put these into a series, even more so since I’m working on more fics. Essentially, Reece and Wax work for a secret government agency that hunts down all manner of monsters who prey on humans. They are both the investigators and the hunters, the only ones who have the skill-set to find out what they’re hunting and then kill it. Reece, like in the film, is more by the books and doesn’t fool around. While Wax, also like in the film, figures you might as well have a little fun while you’re discovering all manner of nasty things. 
> 
> And here, have some Reece [gifs...](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/31417.html)

_~Far beyond the bruising_

_Something underneath_

_Feel me in the aftermath when_

_You learn the world has teeth~_

* * *

 

Was was sending him on one of those damn inconvenient coffee runs _again._

There was no doubt that Reece was speeding and that was something he _never_ did, unlike Wax. His whole stupid justification for it was that Wax was already at the morgue, examining the body of their latest victim, and Reece _hated_ when Wax left him behind to go get a head start for no _stupid_ reason.

So here he was, coffee cups jammed into cup holders too small, their contents hopefully not sloshing around too tumultuously inside their flimsy paper containers, speeding through the streets of the ever-lovely Paris while trying to remember, let alone _find_ , the address Wax had given him _way_ too early in the morning, pre-caffeine and all.

He turned the radio on, classical music trying its best to soothe his nerves for eight seconds flat before it spluttered out and died.

Reece glanced down at the dash in shock and mild outrage, slamming his hand against the console to no effect. Having just caught the latest street sign, only to have it drive home that he had absolutely _no_ idea where he was, Reece swore and pressed down harder on the accelerator, despite knowing better. This was what Wax did: rile him up so that he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t do his job _properly_ , then brush it off later like it was nothing and even worse, all in Reece’s head. Wax might even have taken off by the time he _actually_ got there, but he wouldn’t do that to him. Would he?

_I wouldn’t put it past him._

His nerves on a razor’s edge, Reece thought about slipping a CD into the thin slot above the console before something caught his eye, and once he realized what it was he had no hope of looking away.

There was a body hanging upside down from a telephone wire, a young girl, legs dirty and bloody and bound, long blonde hair practically _drenched_ in blood as it cascaded far beneath her head. Reece had no idea how he could see her eyes from this distance but he _could_ , unseeing and yet open impossibly wide, a macabre warning in their endless depths. Reece swallowed, hands loosening around the steering wheel. His visions did this sometimes, amplified real life moments, prophecies of the last moments of others shifting into entirely personal hallucinations, just like the hot coffee now sloshing over his wrist somehow every bit hotter than it should have been, feeling like _acid,_ tearing through skin and seeping between bone and taunting his self-control.

Reece jerked, taking his eyes off the road for no more than a moment.

It was enough.

Time seemed to slow and stutter and then cease altogether. Reece’s hands were still on the wheel, eyes redirected back toward the road but he wasn’t really seeing, wasn’t reacting and definitely wasn’t _in_ the world. Time was moving too slowly, the cars, the pedestrians, the light shifting from yellow to red ten times too slow.

And then music exploded through the interior of the SUV. Not music really but a _voice_ , a female.

A melody haunting and eternal, unruptured beauty and simultaneous encompassing peace to Reece’s ears. It wasn’t floating from the radio but crowded into Reece’s veins, stirring up his blood, leaking into his head until all of his consciousness and all of his very existence were caught up in this one ethereal voice, this soothing lullaby draining him of all fragility and self-doubt, this voice that sang only for him, boundlessly heartbroken and stunningly joyful and playfully teasing all at once.

And then the impact, disjointing his crippling desperation, tearing him asunder, ripping him away from _her_.

Reality filtered back in in _hellish_ spurts.

He was jammed up against the steering wheel, the resulting tightness of his chest limiting decent intakes of breath. His arms had been thrown up onto the dash and still rested there, waiting for Reece’s attention. Knowing he needed to move, act, do _something,_ Reece went for it rather than test the extent of his injuries, and immediately regretted it.

His ankle felt as if flames were devouring it when he tried to shift it. His now unprotected arms, sleeves torn, were littered with and even, worse case scenario, embedded in glass, elbows to wrists seeping with blood, leeching Reece’s strength and stinging viciously where they laid even without movement. He was still right side up but it wasn’t much, given the first agonizing movement of his entire body that he dared caused what remained of the windshield to rain down on him.

Oh yeah, and when the glass shower had ceased, he realized that what he had crashed into had been _that_ telephone pole. If anything, the realization morphed into a horror so seemingly infinite that the blood sluggishly leaking from his skin, dwindling his capability for concentration, couldn’t even dim that terror, that incredible need for denial.

_Get out get out get out!_

Adrenaline prickling inside him and sputtering to life, Reece fought to pry himself loose from the steering wheel and nearly screamed when he heard a hard thump on the roof inches above his head. The impact it had on the SUV jarred Reece’s wounds, though the impact it bore on Reece’s splitting nerves proved nearly catastrophic.

Renewed panic spurred him to action but not fast enough. The body tumbled forward onto the hood, nothing to shield Reece but inches of suffocating air between them. Dead eyes found his again, almost as if she were claiming him and Reece choked on his next breath, barely was able to pull in another.

His hands fumbled at his seatbelt, Reece unable to remember when he’d dragged them off the dashboard. He wondered how likely it was that he’d pass out before freeing himself, until half a breath later there were an even more persistent set of hands warring with his own. These hands were big and warm and Reece didn’t know why but he _trusted_ them. He slumped against the wheel for a beat, exhaustion mercifully dimming his senses enough so that even his fear began to waver.

Whatever the hands were doing, they were impatient, and Reece’s eyes widened as the sharp glint of a knife sliced through the fabric of his seatbelt. Still not freed, Reece’s head was jolted rudely for long minutes after that as someone continuously hit at the wheel, which Reece dazedly assumed he was somewhat stuck in. Even that gave way under such persistence, careful hands maneuvering him away from that death (head) trap.

The longest pause was after that, when those hands hovered in midair, hesitantly moving to different areas of Reece’s bloodied, damaged body before settling on his shoulders and then slipping underneath his arms to pull him out of the SUV.

Reece finally looked up and behind him and realized it was Wax.

Of course, who else would it be?

Wax was dragging him from the wreckage as gingerly but quickly as possible, and it was fortunate that Reece’s upper arms were about the only part of him that wasn’t _really_ in pain. Unashamedly relieved, Reece’s head lolled back against his partner, all his energy now fixated on not passing out and also on trying to fathom how he was still alive with blood dripping from his head and ears and knees and ankles and arms and probably more places Reece just wasn’t aware of yet.

 _This is a new low,_ he mused. _A new goddamn low, crashing your SUV. But Jesus Christ, what the hell happened? Why was I driving? Was Wax in the car with me? No,_ intuition told him, _he wasn’t. He just happened to be on the scene, or got here in record time somehow._

_It’s Charlie fucking Wax. Why are you even questioning this?_

Wax was shouting at him, shaking the upper half of his body, head brutally pounding in protest until his partner relented with widened eyes, no doubt noticing the blood matting Reece’s hair. And then words filtered into Reece’s previously compromised hearing. “What the fuck happened?”

And Reece laughed, he laughed instead of un-jumbling words and explanations that would prove useless anyway. He laughed instead of crying out at the pain assaulting his head and laying claim to his battered limbs, almost having succeeded in breaking him down. He laughed because this wasn’t something that Wax could protect him from or could understand even in the tiniest way. He laughed because Wax should have dragged a dead body from that vehicle and not _him,_ still conscious and breathing and _alive_ , a bloody fuck-up of a partner whose visions slash hallucinations slash whatever the hell they were and whatever the fuck this was made him black out at the most inopportune times.

So he laughed until he was hysterical, until he was clutching his head so hard his fingernails were leaving imprints at his hairline, until his stomach was rippling and heaving and inevitably he was gagging and vomiting against some wall in an alleyway Wax had dragged him into, away from peering eyes. Wax yanked him upright just as he was about to face plant, numbness creeping over him, and his partner’s forceful, demanding nature jerked Reece back to an unpleasant and great deal more painful reality somewhat of his own making.

“If you did that on purpose, James Reece, I swear to _god…”_

Reece wiped his mouth off on his already bloodied sleeve. He tried to spit out the horrid taste in his mouth, longingly craving caffeine as a result; that is, until he reminded himself that he was crouched down in some dark and filthy alleyway, barely able to walk or keep his head upright, blocks away from any decent coffee shop, his life having gotten _this_ fucked up.

At least _her_ music was out of his ears.

And at least he couldn’t remember it; he wondered if that was the point.

He pressed hands again to his head and started squeezing, the pain about to split his head open. Wax was pushing him against the wall, hopefully a clean section, though making Reece lean against him still, legs bracketing Reece’s body, a hand on his thigh and another trying to grasp Reece’s hands so that they didn’t do any more damage to his already banged up head.

“Come on, we’ve gotta get you looked over. I’m still picking bits of glass out of your arms, _goddammit_ , Reece.”

Reece shook his head in childish though still fiercely adamant protest and the consequences were instantaneous. It felt like his entire body was lighting up like a Christmas tree, heat that _burned_ like a raging inferno as it coursed through his body rapidly until Reece could do nothing but _implode_ , vision flickering out and consciousness following suit. There weren’t just stars but fireworks, so bright Reece thought for a few seconds that they had actually permanently blinded him. They twisted and twirled dizzyingly in the unending darkness that had become Reece’s world until he could feel again, and he felt himself fall against a solid figure, felt his hands tingling as if electricity coursed through them, felt his mouth gaping open as he desperately tried to pull air in.

Familiar notes drifted back to him and he clapped his hands over his ears so hard it _hurt_ . “Siren,” he rasped, praying Wax could hear him, that he’d do _something_ , even if it meant shooting at empty air.

A hand was peeled away from his ear and Wax’s voice drowned out _most_ of her. “You have to pinpoint where it’s coming from, Reece! I can’t see or hear a goddamn thing!”

Reece heard a click and Wax was gone, surprising Reece enough that his cheek slammed against the brick wall before he slid down it, holes and tears in his clothes ensuring he felt every _bit_ of the impact. He acceded to seconds of recovery, bit down on his lip so hard it started bleeding again and shoved Wax’s questing hand away from him. _Not now! Wax can’t do anything for me except get rid of_ her.

He wrapped his disorientation and nerve-splitting pain into a giant aching, leaking ball and shoved it deep down inside himself so he could focus on her, on how her otherworldly voice filled him up so completely until he was certain he was on the verge of drowning.

Until her voice easily and without warning dissolved into screeching, pounding his eardrums with every ounce of force and influence he had no doubt she possessed.

Reece heard one shot, two shots fired, could feel liquid leaking from his eyes and ears, took every morsel of his training and applied it, told himself that he didn’t need to be a victim, that he’d been given every tool, every resource _not_ to be a victim.

A third shot exploded next to his ear and it muted her voice just enough for Reece to find its source.

He pointed a finger, cringed and ducked his head at her inhuman shriek and allowed the lightning crack of the fourth gunshot to reverberate through his bones, settling him back down into relative silence and calm.

And yet the remnants of her still remained.

Reece tipped over and came to suspended upside down from the ceiling, ropes cutting into tender skin, hands and feet bound. The ground was far, _far_ down and still he was _cut_ , fell for ages until he collided face-first with the concrete, sinking slowly into a pool of his own blood, the splash roaring in his ears before the thunder of his heartbeat replaced it. Blood leaked into any opening of him it could reach: eyes, ears, through his mouth, into torn open and exposed skin, alive and searching and intent on corrupting him and he conceded, his eyes drifting drifting drifting shut…

Hands clasped his shoulders again and tilted him further upright, preventing him from tumbling further down into memory and madness. He was kneeling once more on asphalt but not _in_ blood, gifted with wide open space and clean air, not held captive in a claustrophobic room smothering its victims with nameless terrors. What that poor girl had experienced before she died…

Wax could probably see it well-enough in Reece’s thousand yard stare.

Reece blinked and it was a helpless few moments, fear an ever-present itch under his skin, until he realized the droplets raining down on him weren’t blood but _water._ He allowed it to pool inside his mouth, coating his aching throat, quenching his uncontrollable thirst. He endured it washing away the blood staining his arms and face, but his head was still too sensitive and he covered it with weakened, mangled-feeling arms, waiting as he always did, waiting for what he didn’t know, never knew.

The rain died down to mere sprinkles.

Tired of waiting but still resigned to it, he slowly crawled the rest of the way down to the ground and rested there.

“I can’t even leave you alone for five minutes, can I?” Wax quipped, falling on his ass beside Reece, breathing heavily and staring up at the sky as if he dared the rain to come back. If precipitation knew better, it wouldn’t mess with Charlie Wax.

Reece just laid back, all but giving up on taming his headache. He rested his head lightly against the asphalt, gazed dazedly up at the storm clouds and wondered when he’d _actually_ be able to drink a cup of coffee this morning.

**FIN**

 

 

 


End file.
